The Titanic Story of Evelyn, a biography by Lisa Wilkinson
13 April 2026
Evelyn Marsden, a steward and nurse on the Titanic’s doomed 1912 maiden voyage, became known as the only Australian woman to survive the tragic sinking of the ocean liner.
Marsden helped distressed passengers, before eventually being told to get into a lifeboat.
Growing up, Marsden used to row in the Murray River, during family holidays, and would set herself the challenge of rowing against the tide. The skill proved invaluable as she helped row the lifeboat she was aboard, with forty other people, against the pull the sinking Titanic exerted on them.
Marsden was born in Stockyard Creek, South Australia in 1883. After the sinking, she married William James, a doctor who also worked for the White Star Line, owner of the Titanic.
They lived in South Australia for some years before moving to Bondi. Marsden died at age fifty-four in 1938, and is buried in Waverley Cemetery, with her husband, who died a short time afterwards.
Marsden’s life is now the subject of a biography, The Titanic Story of Evelyn, written by Australian TV presenter and journalist, Lisa Wilkinson, which is being published tomorrow, Tuesday 14 April 2026.
RELATED CONTENT
Australia, Australian literature, books, literature, Titanic
Artemis II returns safely to Earth despite heat shield concerns
13 April 2026
Splashdown occurred at about ten o’clock in the morning in my part of the world. I had been dreading the fiery re-entry phase of the flight, after a number of commentators expressed doubts as to the integrity of the return vehicle’s heat shield. Thankfully all was well in the end.
RELATED CONTENT
astronomy, science, space exploration
Hacker News: built on more than good software
10 April 2026
Every developer who sees HN thinks, “I could build that in a weekend.” And they’re right; they absolutely could. In fact, I’d assume they’re pretty shite at their jobs if they couldn’t. What they couldn’t build in a weekend // month // year // probably ever, is the thing that makes Hacker News actually work. And that ~thing is not the software.
There’s this concept called googlyness. Legend has it, if you want to work at Google, you need a certain set of traits, apparently referred to as googlyness.
To build the next Hacker News, and make a success of it, you’re going to need hackernewsness, something possibly far more elusive than googlyness.
RELATED CONTENT
Say nothing to Houston: decades old bug found in Apollo guidance system code
9 April 2026
JUXT, a software consultancy based in the United Kingdom, report discovering a bug in the code of the Apollo Guidance Computer, nearly fifty-four years after the last Apollo Moon flight:
The Apollo Guidance Computer (AGC) is one of the most scrutinised codebases in history. Thousands of developers have read it. Academics have published papers on its reliability. Emulators run it instruction by instruction. We found a bug in it that had been missed for fifty-seven years: a resource lock in the gyro control code that leaks on an error path, silently disabling the guidance platform’s ability to realign.
The guidance systems were installed in both the command module, and lunar module (the vessel that landed on the Moon), of the Apollo craft.
Thankfully, the bug didn’t manifest itself during the Apollo missions. There’s enough happening during a flight to the Moon without wanting to worry about patches for software bugs.
RELATED CONTENT
science, space exploration, technology
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, a documentary by Daniel Roher, Charlie Tyrell
9 April 2026
The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist, is a documentary co-directed by Daniel Roher and Charlie Tyrell, who hope to make sense of artificial intelligence (AI).
But tune into the trailer, and hear the likes of Sam Altman, Dario Amodei, and Denis Hassabis, and others, utter lines such as “if this technology goes wrong, it can go quite wrong”, or “I know people who work on AI risk who don’t expect their children to make it to high school.”
Along with, “it’s being deployed prematurely. There’s so much potential for things to go wrong”, and “China, North Korea, Russia, whoever wins is essentially the controller of humankind.”
Do we really know what AI is, or, more the question, what it will become?
RELATED CONTENT
artificial intelligence, Charlie Tyrell, Daniel Roher, documentary, film
Forget artificial intelligence, aliens may usurp humanity instead
8 April 2026
When people are in competition, they work harder if the game seems winnable, and decrease effort if they think they’ll lose. It’s implied that because humans are so far behind aliens, we are uncompetitive and so should put in less effort.
There’s — somehow — an idea, published on Marginal Revolution, that technologically advanced extraterrestrials have placed alien drone probes, which evade detection, across the solar system. These devices — if they exist — are apparently keeping an eye on what’s happening on Earth.
I even double checked the date the article was posted: Saturday 4 April 2026. So it wasn’t some sort of April Fool’s caper. On the other hand of course, Artemis II was on the way to the Moon by then.
The question though, what should we do if there are surveillance probes within the solar system? And who knows, maybe aliens are watching us. Maybe extraterrestrials indeed exist — there’s surely at least one intelligent alien civilisation somewhere in the universe — and they’ve found us.
But why they don’t make their presence known puzzles me. All those UAP sightings over the last several decades have somewhat given the show away, have they not? Let’s see you, not your incredible interstellar-space travel capable vessels.
But if we don’t want extraterrestrials to wipe us out, or simply stop us travelling beyond the limits of the solar system — things they may want to do — we need to lift our game. Work harder. Be more ambitious. Even if we remain uncompetitive in comparison. We also all need to work together.
If that’s possible. And if it’s not, I think that’s why they call it the great filter.
What a situation to be in.
RELATED CONTENT
The Indie Internet Index, another new directory of independent websites
8 April 2026
Hot on the heels of Monday’s link to indie/independent blog post aggregator Blogosphere, comes the Indie Internet Index. The importance of these sorts of resources cannot be understated at a time when the independent, open web, is under increasing threat.
RELATED CONTENT
blogs, self publishing, technology, trends
Yahoo, cornerstone of pre-2000 old web, is bouncing back
7 April 2026
Nilay Patel, writing for The Verge:
After a long series of mergers and spinouts and an extremely odd moment where it was part of Verizon, Yahoo is once again an independent, privately held company. And it has big properties in sports and finance, and, against all odds, email, where it’s growing with young people. Gen Z loves Yahoo Mail, people. You heard it here first.
If we want a return — at least in part — to the ethos of the so-called “old web”, a period — debatably — spanning the mid-nineties through to the advent of social media, circa 2008 or so, then Yahoo getting back on its feet is surely a prerequisite. It seems strange to think now, twenty-five plus years later, that prior to 2000, Yahoo’s search engine was just about the only player in town.
RELATED CONTENT
technology, trends, web history
Long term, moderate, coffee consumption might lower dementia risk
7 April 2026
Carly Page, writing for The Register:
Researchers from Mass General Brigham tracked more than 130,000 people for over four decades and found that those who regularly consumed moderate amounts of caffeinated coffee or tea had an 18 percent lower risk of developing dementia compared to those who rarely touched the stuff.
The thing is coffee consumption has to be consistent — spread across decades — and in moderation. Two, maybe three, cups per day. But caffeine seems to be the active ingredient, not coffee per se.
Drinkers of teas with higher caffeine levels might also enjoy the same benefits. Matcha, and black tea, are among tea beverages high in caffeine.
RELATED CONTENT
Blogosphere: an algorithm free blog post aggregator
6 April 2026
The new (to me at least) aggregator of blog posts aptly and cleverly titled Blogosphere, is the creation of engineer and writer Ramkarthik Krishnamurthy:
But it’s really about something bigger: rebuilding a thriving community of independent writers and thinkers who share their thoughts freely, without waiting for an algorithm to decide who gets to see them.
A list of recent blog posts can also be viewed in a more simple text style format. In addition, both listings of posts have their own RSS feeds.
Blogosphere joins other fine IndieWeb/SmallWeb blog post aggregators including Blogs Are Back, Blogroll Club, Blogroll, Feedle, powRSS, Oceania Web Atlas, and ooh.directory, to name but a few.
RELATED CONTENT